Californian documents state's skiing legacy

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NORCO, Calif. -- In a state known for sun and sand, and a city where horses and hay bales are at home, Ingrid Wicken's personal obsession is skiing -- the snow kind. The dirt road to her Norco, Calif. house and the crowing of a neighbor's rooster give no hint of it. But step inside the modular building at the back of her property and her passion becomes clear, from the walls stacked with skiing books and materials in 10 languages to the old wooden skis and miniature cable car that decorate the room. Wicken, a Norco resident since junior high, is a former cross-country skiing instructor and has skied in Yosemite and Tahoe as well as Idaho, Oregon and Colorado. Between monthly ski outings, she is also a collector, and boasts one of the country's more extensive ski libraries in a humble boxlike building behind her house. Already a hiker, Wicken learned to cross-country ski in the 1970s, when there was a resurgence in the sport's popularity. "It's a fascinating sport. If you think about it, it's kind of like sledding for grown-ups," she said. "It's a way for us to continue to enjoy the mountains year-round." She began buying ski books while working on her master's thesis -- a comparison of the body's diagonal stride on snow skis versus on roller skis -- and soon she had a collection. In 2005, Wicken finally bought a building to house the items. Today, she estimates her California Ski Library includes more than 2,300 books, 10,000 photos, and hundreds of magazines and other printed materials, as well as various old trophies, medals and miscellaneous items. Donations from other collectors have added one-of-a-kind artifacts. A swastika pin from the 1936 Olympics, held in Germany, came from skier and mountaineer Glen Dawson. Former ski columnist Ethel Van Degrift's personal collection, now part of the library, included early Ansel Adams photos. "She has one of the best ski libraries in the nation," said Doug Pfeiffer, former editor-in-chief of Skiing Magazine who also wrote the forward to the first of two books by Wicken. Having a library behind the house comes in handy now that Wicken is working on a third skiing book. The first two books were about the history of skiing in Southern California, from Los Angeles to San Diego, and the latest book is on ski jumping there. She has taken a sabbatical from her job teaching physical education at UC Riverside's Moreno Valley campus to work on it. People have been skiing in California since the 1850s, Wicken said. But Pfeiffer said as a mode of transportation it has been around much longer -- as the finding of a 4,000-year-old ski in a peat bog in Sweden attests. But while plenty of people practice the sport, Pfeiffer admitted that ski history is "a little esoteric." Even Wicken's expertise does not always command respect. At a 2002 meeting of the International Ski History Association, Wicken's friend Wolfgang Lert -- a ski journalist -- mentioned Wicken's book on Southern California skiing. "Everybody started laughing," Wicken said. "People still think it doesn't snow in California." To contact Ingrid Wicken or visit the California Ski Library, go to www.skilibrary.com. E-mail Alicia Robinson at arobinson(at)PE.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)